Father suing IVF clinic after doctors let ex use his DNA to have secret baby

A FATHER is suing a Harley Street fertility clinic for £1million for letting his expartner secretly conceive his child after they split.

He says she tricked doctors into impregnating her – using a frozen egg fertilised by his sperm – in October 2010.

This was five months after their ‘volatile and rancorous’ relationship ‘irretrievably broke down’.

The former couple, who are in their 40s but cannot be identified for legal reasons, previously had a son together using IVF.

More of their eggs and sperm were being held in cold storage at the Hammersmith Hospital clinic in West London, run by IVF Hammersmith Limited, of Harley Street, Central London.

The father, who is now married to another woman, claims his former partner ‘forged his signature’ on documents to secure the release of the fertilised eggs without his agreement.

In 2011, the mother gave birth to a daughter, who the father ‘understandably loves’ despite the circumstances in which he says she was conceived.

But he blames the clinic for implanting the embryo into his ex without his knowledge.

He is now bringing an unprecedented claim for breach of contract, demanding £1million for the cost of raising his daughter, now six, plus legal fees for a custody battle with her mother, who was described in court as ‘a teacher at a very good school’.

He says that looking after his daughter has placed on him ‘a financial burden which is not offset by any benefits’.

The claim includes ‘hundreds of thousands of pounds’ for the girl’s private education plus funding for a nanny, skiing holidays in Canada and a Land Rover Discovery.

The High Court in London heard yesterday that the woman told her ex-boyfriend what she had done on Valentine’s Day.

She was already into the final three months of her pregnancy with his IVF child when she sent him an email on February 14, 2011, stating, ‘and by the way, I’m pregnant’, the father said.

He replied to her email, saying: ‘That’s clever – why would you do that? I’m truly amazed by what you have done.’ The father, who lived in a £1.3million house in North London, denied that the fertility clinic was not told that the couple had split until 18 months after the baby was born.

‘I phoned the clinic on February 15, 2011, to reveal all,’ he said. ‘I wanted to know what had gone on. I was in a terrible state.

‘My response was, “Oh my God, how could this happen?” I’d never agreed to get her pregnant. My head was exploding. Can you imagine something like this happening? I was in a new relation- ship with a woman I loved very dearly. I thought, “Oh my God, this is going to destroy this relationship.” It turned my head upside down. I couldn’t function. It was just so overwhelming.’

The father admitted he had paid for tests and attended appointments after the birth of their son to explore the possibility of the mother having another baby via IVF. ‘But it was not an agreement to have another child,’ he said.

Describing their relationship before the break-up, the father told Mr Justice Jay: ‘It was more than volatile. It was a relationship which was in terminal decline.

‘It was a catastrophe, you can’t imagine the environment we were in. It was a terrible time.’

He said the couple had split up after ‘a final hideous weekend’ at a holiday cottage.

But Jeremy Hyam QC, for the clinic, told the court that it was not to blame. He argued that even if the father’s signature on the ‘consent to thaw’ form is found to have been forged, the clinic should not have to pay up.

The barrister claimed that the father played a full part in the IVF process up to a matter of months before the final form was signed, and had signed one form even after the couple had split.

Mark Donald, for the mother, has yet to address the court. She denies having forged the father’s signature, but is also the subject of a third party claim by the clinic, the court heard.

The case continues.

‘It turned my head upside down’